In one of the many rallies in support of the Alende government in

Chile when the military was about to rise its head, one old worker

marching in front of the Presidential Palce was carrying a placard

saying "This government is like shit, but it is my government".

Today in our campaign againsts VSU, we, the left, find ourselves in a

position which the left has so often had to face in past two decades

:defending an institution of social democracy against the neoliberal

onslaught. In this case, as in so many others, what we are defending

is often one of the most rotten, reformist, corrupted and undemcratic

institutions, yet we do so because they are one of the few spaces in

our society which provide people with the opportunity to organise

collectively from below, and to defend their basic conditions of life.

I might say that I don’t really come before you as a representative of

the National Union of Students. At the moment I am the only state

education officer in the country not in the ALP, and one of only 3

non-ALP Office Bearers in the NSW State Branch. I really come hear as

a member of the Libertarian Communist Collective, a group of what we

would call ‘Left Marxists’ who identify quite strongly with many of

the Anarchist and Liberatian Communist movements of the last 150

years.

I want to start by talking briefly about why the Government has moved

to introduce VSU, and then go on to outline the strategy which the

Libertarian Communist Collective put forward for campaigning against

VSU at the beginning of the year, then our critique of the position

put forward by the DSP and Resistance, and finish with an analysis of

how well our strategies were born out by experience and some other

issues and problems which have arisen in the course of the campaign,

which I think that the left could well learn from.

We see two main factors which have created the space for the Liberal

Party to attempt to introduce VSU. The first is the major shift in

power relations in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when capital

basically broke with class consensus as a strategy, and basically

declared war on the insititutions of social democracy. VSU is part of

this neoliberal offensive, in rhetoric and its strategic aims.

The second factor which we think has made VSU a possibility is the

failure of the student left, especially over the last 10 to 15 years,

to capture the hearts, minds and activism of students - as Kemp so

poiniantly points out "If student organisations were so good why

wouldn’t students join if they were voluntary.". To an overwhelming

extent this has been the failure of the Labour Left, who have by in

large run the vast majority of student organisations and especially

National Union of Students. Their strategies of ‘representation’,

elite networking and lack of understanding of the importance of

grassroots struggle, while always flawed, has been completely defunct

since capital broke with class consensus in the 70’s. That said, the

failure of the left does also reflect the failure of the rest of the

left to present a viable alternative Labour Left.

That said, here we are now, we face a proposal for VSU. What do we do

about it?

The basic strategic perspective put forward at the beginning of the

year by the Liberatarian Communist Collective, and to a large extent

today, was that the central argument which needs to be won with

students is that student organisations are the real guarantors of

student freedom and choice, through things like the defence of student

conditions. The central examples of this are the defence student

organisations provide against harrasment and unfair treatment by

lecturers and against attacks by University Admins and the Federal

Government.

Concretely this manifest in our support for such slogans as ‘Defend

Your Union -it defends you" and "There are some things which you just

can’t do alone", and "No Fees, No Cuts, No VSU". More contravesially,

we proposed that a major part of the campaign against VSU on all

campuses be each EAG and student organisation picking an attack on

each campus against some basic student condition, such as a new fee or

cuts to tutorials or similar and run a simple grassroots campaign

against it, involving mass petitioning and General Student Meetings

and the like. While this has been charactertured as sidelining VSU,

the proposals we concretely put forward, basically pushed for was a

dual focus, and one where the two issues were closely linked in

material and actions.

This strategy we believed to be important because

a) it provided continuity with the anti-Fees and Cuts campaigns of the

past and the near future,

b) with and effective 25% cut to public funding over 5years, campuses

were bound to be ripe with sites for struggle, and struggles,

c) such campaigns can and have been quite effective at providing

concrete wins and quite participatory campaigns, which can inject

activists and students with faith in their own collective strength.

d) as the student left contracts, as it did in 1998, there is the real

problem that it will loose touch with students. By addressing basic

conditions, I think the left makes sure that it stays in touch. This

is not just an abstract, moralistic point. Take a look at the

implementation of Victorian model VSU - the strength of campus

activism, and percieved level of student affinity with their Student

Organisation has proved vital in the way which Victorial model VSU has

been implemented on campuses - on campuses like RMIT, where the SU was

percieved as having strong affinity with students, the Admin have not

implemented VSU, and La Trobe, where the SRC became quite issolated

from students, the Admin just squeezed them till they were crushed.

OK. This strategy was in sharp contradiction to the perspective put

foward by the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance. The strategy

as I understand it was slogans should be "VSU=an attack on democracy",

"Its about silence" and "Defend the right to organise", and the

strategy for action was for EAGs and Student Organisations to soley

focus on the anti-VSU campaign, to the explicit exclusion of campaigns

around campus conditions.

The reasons given for this position were

a) VSU is the major attack on students at the moment,

b) VSU is in the media and it is in the forefront of student

consciousness.

c) the student movement is weak at the moment, and does not have the

resources to focus on two campaigns at once.

d) VSU may get sidelined.

e) If we focus on VSU we have a real strong posibility of winning, and

a win for the student movement would be a massive shot in the arm,

especially in terms of confidence of the movement.

I won’t draw out our critique of these strategy, but just say:

a) I think that the slogans were much too abstract, and don’t really

reflect a correct analysis of the conditions of students and their

relations to their student organisations. The way we see it is that

for students, unlike workers in a trade union, their is no organic or

intermediate links of contact beween students for instance in a class

or a faculty and office bearers, which could provide the multitude of

experiences on which such slogans as "VSU=an attack on democracy", or

even "Stop the Liberal Union busting" (which the ISO originally

proposed as a slogan) could really take hold.

b) secondly, I think that the decision to drop education campaigns

contains an assumption, which I really don’t think student

organisations and EAGs can or should make, that is basically asking

Student organisations and EAGs to stop doing their job - defending

students educational conditions. I don’t think the DSP would go into a

sexuality collective and argue that they should just campaign on VSU,

or do similar in an Environment or Anti-Racism Collective.

Thirdly, I think the issue of running two campaigns isn’t really a as

much of a problem as the DSP/Resistance have made out - the basic

strategy which LCC proposed was run by the Macquarie Uni left, under

incredibly hostile conditions with an ALP Right Students Council, for

two years in a row in 1997 and 1998 (and again in1999). In 1998 it

produced a concrete victory by the end of o-week, and in 1997 it was

run concurrently with NDAs.

OK, the last issue I want to deal with is ‘What has the experience of

campaigning over the last two months shown us?" Well, its worth

stating that both proposals have been picked up to greater and lesser

extents in the CCEN and on various campus collectives, and also, that

the weakness of the student movement and lack of experienced activists

on many campuses has ment that it is not a simple experience to

interpret.

In terms of whether there were the conditions on campuses for a campus

conditions campaign, I have to say I think that there was Examples of

what people ound when they looked include: At Sydney Uni 2nd and 3rd

Year Philsophy don’t have tutorials - so much or Socratic method. In

the Degree Speach Pathology at Cumberland, 2nd year has no tutorials

at all, pays a $60 fee for labs each year, and had 15% of the course

fail first year last year because the university overenroled, and

couldn’t fit them all in second year - no one failed this subject in

1997, 15% failed in 1998. At Macquarie Uni, in the majority of first

year subjects are so filled beyond capacity that students aren’t only

sitting on the stairs, they fill the floor at the front of the

lecture, and flow out the door.

In terms of the effectiveness of the strategy of campaigning around

campus conditions and VSU, I’ll start by saying, when I’ve campaigned

on campus conditions, this year and last, it is amazing the response

you get - I was out at Bankstown last week petitioning about car

parking fees, and 70 of student’s who went past our table signed the

petition, that is just massive response.

A little more analytically I’d like to look at the numbers at the last

NDA in Melbourne and Sydney. Basically, the story in Sydney 800-1000

people came to the rally, and Melboure about 2000 did. Both mobilised

similar numbers at their main city campuses Sydney/Melb, RMIT/UTS -

brought about 600 to 1000 combined to each rally. RMIT probably more

because at the moment the left is much healthier there. They also both

mobilsed relatively negligale numbers from almost all other campuses -

In Sydney most other campuses brought about 50 people each - not a

small effort, and no enditment on the activists on those campuses, but

relatively small all the same. The big difference in Victoria however,

was that they mobilised close to 500 TAFE Students and 500 students

from Victorian College of the Arts (VCA)- the VIC equivilent of

College of Fine Arts, with less than 3000 students studying at it.

OK, but what my point. Firstly - the major reason why VCA rouht so

many people is because they are one of the few campuses which went

against the trend last year and had a vibrant active education

campain, and this campaign was based around the campaign against

Upfront Fees, and against funding cuts on campus. The momentum from

this campaign has continued through to the VSU campaign, suggesting

that the two issues are able to e linked in student’s minds. Secondly,

of the 500 TAFE student their, 200 of them were from Swinburn TAFE, at

which VITSAN had been running a massive anti-car parking fee campaign.

The 200 people from Swinburn TAFE aren’t only significant because of

their numbers, but also because Swinburn is nearly 30 or 40 minutes

drive from the city, and to my knowledge, that is the only group of

students larger than 50 that attended either rally in Sydney or

Melbourne.

These examples aren’t conclusive, but they suggest to me that the

strategy LCC proposed is as a general strategy, still valid and one

worth pursuing.

Two last points which I think I’ve learnt, and I’m having to skip a

few points becuase I don’t want to take too much time:

Firstly, I think a problem with the strategy which we proposed, and

something I don’t think LCC was clear enough on, was that the campus

conditions campaign and the VSU campaign shouldn’t be run as parrallel

campaigns, but rather, the link between defending conditions and the

importance of student unionism to defend those conditions needs to be

made more closely, and explicitly. I think that we weren’t as clear on

this point as we should have been, and I think this was a mistake

However, the adoption of slogans like "Defend Student Union to Defend

Education" is one way of doing this.

In terms of where to now, I think largely that our basic position

still stands, and it is going to be a matter of applying to the

concrete situation on each campus, and having these and other debates

out in EAGs and the CCEN.

In the longer term, I’d like to end where I started: we have to see

the Liberal’s attempt at VSU as a reflection of the failure of the

left - if we had active, vibrant student movement, and student

organisations which which were not so beurocratic and which didn’t

make students pay $400 per year for crap food and squash courts, then

we wouldn’t even be ahve to fighting this campaign in the first place.

To this extent, I think that the left should put serious effort into

constructing a picture of what we would like student organisations, or

perhaps our alternatives to them, to look like in the not too distant

future, and spend serious resources selling this vision to students,

because if we don’t, we can be sure that the Liberals will try soon

enough to sell theirs.